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By Laura Legere (Staff Writer)
/
Published: July 3, 2013

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A former Pennsylvania environmental regulator and Democratic gubernatorial candidate told an interstate agency on Tuesday that it can have "no confidence" in the Corbett administration's ability to oversee natural gas drilling in the Delaware River watershed because it "is not adequately regulating the gas industry in Pennsylvania where gas drilling is now taking place."

John Hanger, a former secretary of the Department of Environmental Protection, wrote to the Delaware River Basin Commission days after Gov. Tom Corbett urged the agency to finalize its draft drilling rules and open the watershed to gas development.

"Pennsylvania is in no position today to provide proper oversight of gas drilling in the expanded area of the Delaware River watershed," Mr. Hanger wrote in a letter to the commission's executive director and federal and state members from Delaware, New Jersey and New York. "This failure rests at the feet of Gov. Corbett."

Mr. Hanger suggested that Mr. Corbett could build confidence in his oversight by hiring 105 more DEP staff members to regulate drilling and create an ombudsman's office to investigate citizens' drilling complaints.

Mr. Corbett's Energy Executive Patrick Henderson defended the governor's record of strengthening the state's drilling laws and oversight while encouraging gas development. In an emailed statement, he pointed to DEP's current proposal to increase drilling fees in order to hire more oil and gas staff among other changes.

He called Mr. Hanger's letter a "baseless, classless, and factually inaccurate attack on Gov. Corbett."

"What is more offensive," he wrote, "is that Mr. Hanger attacks the professionalism, integrity and commitment to environmental protection of the over 2,600 DEP employees, many of whom he once directed."

Drilling has been on hold in the Delaware basin since May 2010 as the river basin commission developed a comprehensive set of drilling regulations. The commission never voted on the rules and indefinitely postponed a vote that was scheduled to take place in November 2011.

Contact the writer: llegere@timesshamrock.com

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